Just Imagine
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- Publication date
- 1947
- Usage
- Public Domain
Shotlist
Tommy Telephone materializes out of a telephone company advertisement to produce a telephone by magic. He puts paper slips marked with names of raw materials into a hooper and grinds out 433 telephone parts.
Ken Smith sez: Did you know that a telephone (ca. 1947) has 433 parts? The frustrated on-screen narrator of this film must convey that fact to the audience, but he can't figure out how to do it until he's helped by an animated cartoon character named "Tommy Telephone" (the AT&T advertising spokescreature at that time). This nuttiness apparently wasn't enough for Jam Handy, so the entire second half of this film is devoted to a single-frame animation extravaganza of a telephone -- its parts anthropomorphised -- assembling itself to marching music! Fun!
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- Addeddate
- 2002-07-16 00:00:00
- Ccnum
- asr
- Closed captioning
- no
- Collectionid
- 07991
- Color
- B&W
- Country
- United States
- Identifier
- JustImag1947
- Numeric_id
- 607
- Proddate
- 1947
- Run time
- 10:27
- Sound
- Sd
- Type
- MovingImage
- Whisper_asr_module_version
- 20230805.01
comment
Reviews
Subject: Mystery Somewhat Unraveled
During this time, plus well before and after, all the telephones in this country were manufactured, assembled, installed and repaired by the local telephone company, predominantly Bell Telephone.
No one else ever saw the inside or knew what parts were used to make a telephone. No doubt a good many people wondered.
The film was presented in a way that was entertaining and held one's attention while fulfilling it's goal of explaining the makeup of the phone.
The Bell System commonly shared information and messages with their customers ( and shareholders), most always very professionally done.
Subject: The Cadium's Connected to the Nickel
There's a bit of combination live action/animation featuring a cartoon character that's voiced by someone off-mike (he has an Ezra Stone-as-Henry Aldrich quality). The interaction with the live action ad guy is a bit hokey but the technical quality is good.
Subject: Leave It To Jam Handy!
Another stellar production from Jam Handy, ruly the 20th century's best maker of advertising and other "ephemeral" films involving such things as utility development, sales techniques, innovative product descriptions, etc. Jam Handy was not in New York City, either. It was on East Grand Blvd in the New Center in the middle of (now totally defunct) Detroit!, two blocks east of GM headquarters (in the Fisher Building).
A delightful film and you'll find many more goodies from Jam Handy on this site.
If you don't remember phones like this, sorry, you were born too late.
Subject: Delightful 1940's stop motion animation
Subject: 433 parts
Subject: I Don't know his name, but his face rings a bell!
Subject: Ring, ring--it's for you!
Subject: Bizarre little film
The stop motion photography showing the various pieces of a period phone being reassembled is well done and fascinating to watch, but one is never sure what the point is. There is an abstract quality to the whole exercise.
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